Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Kula Shaker
Label: Columbia Records
Released: 1996
Length: 48:51
Rating: 4.5/5
The mid-nineties were a time when the sound of grunge and more or less gloomy alternative echoed pretty much everywhere around the world, and the psychedelic playfulness of the almost completely forgotten sixties was more a distant memory than something you could catch on the radio waves. Still, it was exactly something this unexpected that became a shot of surprise and inspiration when young faces lit up on MTV and, in 1996, a track brimming with Hindu wisdom and optimism, Tattva, rang out of the speakers. Nobody had dared expect anything more than that from a bunch of kids in the age of one-hit-wonder floods and Britpop.
Despite everything, the freshness didn’t fade like some cheap perfume over a full 15 years, and as time went by, more and more warm corners in my mind and heart opened up for the song of those “spaced-out hippies” that I’d rejected so harshly back then. Hand on heart: everything takes its time, and so did my openness to something optimistic, sunny and musically juicy. And all the elements of that Eastern-inspired rainbow are more than matched by the British wunderkinder of psychedelic pop-ness, Kula Shaker.
So what are Kula Shaker? Not just a band run with the iron hand of guitar guru Crispian Mills, and a distinctly British answer to The Black Crowes and Oasis at the same time. It doesn’t tell you much, either, that the lads took their name from King Kulasekhara, who ruled India in the 8th century. Extra qualities are easier to spot from a distance, and 15 years is a span in which time has already washed away some of the prejudice and media hype. All that was left to judge was the music, and it’s anything but boring or kitschy and soulless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFstthQIWZw
The debut on their road to musical conquest, the album K, is a textbook example of a brilliantly conceived rock masterpiece. Heavy riffs and a guitar legacy of sonically melting ideas into audible images, the way only Jimi Hendrix knew how, are joined by a strong dose of Eastern spirituality, a fascination with Sanskrit and the traditional Indian sounds of sitar, tabla, tambura and oriental scales. The bridge between East and West is granite-solid and elegant at once, the Indian imagery inspired by Mills’s personal experience of a land of great contrasts, beauty and mysticism, and the final result in many ways recalls what the immortal The Beatles wrote and recorded in the late sixties with their own infatuation with India. And the album K is a tribute to all of the above as well as to Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead, to whom they devoted an entire song on the record within their neoclassical psychedelia, but more on that a bit later.
Open the colorful booklet, after carefully dissecting the drawn and immortalized concept of the great K, penned by Dave Gibbons, where under the letter K you’ll find JFK, Lord Kitchener, Karl Marx, Gene Kelly, Katherine Hepburn, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Danny Kaye, Kal-El (better known as Superman), Krishna, King Kong, Martin Luther King, Kali and many more, and it becomes clear that none of this is mere coincidence (or is it?). The opening track Hey Dude, with its guitar build-up, signals that the dynamics here serve perfect musical eroticism and perfect shine, aiming to compete with the great saga of rival Britpop with a pair of rock balls and solid musical-lyrical weaving. What grabs you are the firm guitar lines and a sound that fills every corner of production, for the full bliss of an ever-receptive soul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zclm0cIBl94
Next comes Knight On The Town, which once again bets on a rustic recipe of piano and fat, lewd guitar. The sound caresses and embraces the body, and then the flight of mysticism begins, unfurling Indian texts and Eastern mystery. Temple Of Everlasting Light is closer to a Led Zeppelin-style trip and a meditation mantra than to the high-quality, dazzling rock posing so far. Crispian sings “Will I ever see the pleasure that will never end / Hidden in the misty forest that desire send / Mesmerised like fireflys falling through a flame / If I wait I’ll be too late to holler out your name.” Out of the guitar sound weaves a lace of quality dance music, then silence, birdsong and a spill of thoughts into the essence of India. Sitar, tabla and dreamy vocals grow into Govinda. The sacred texts are just a jumping-off point for the British lads, but despite the traditional vocabulary it’s very catchy and lures you into dancing and swaying. The marriage of West and East, two seemingly incompatible worlds, sounds dreamy and beautiful, and the brilliant combination of balanced musical elements proves that Kula Shaker were already mature, quality musicians despite their young age, with the ether of the divine burning through them.
Smart Dogs is a return to the rock side of the universe, the guitar sound complemented by the unplugged, party-minded chatter of a young hedonist following the motto “Carpe diem“. Magic Theatre is a fully psychedelic leap into gentler waters of cabaret drunkenness. A slight deviation from the steel thread of thought, in tune with the fractal legacy of acid, gropingly dissolves like an apparition in a little over two minutes, and we land in the heart of Into The Deep. “Enter your heart, and never let it part / Yesterday was a lie so be happy now. / When all you can feel is what you take as real / Come alive, realise it’s a feeling. / Fly brother fly, / May you feel your love tonight, / Fly brother fly, / Well I hope you meet your maker. / I know, the time has come to let you go / Time to sleep, to sleep.” The mental switch into spheres of pure astrality is carried on by the perfect instrumental Sleeping Jiva. Traditional Indian instruments weave together and create the perfect foundation for one of the record’s main and best-known moments, the song Tattva. You may well have overdosed on that one on MTV, so what follows is a somewhat more offbeat detour, a dedication to the late wizard of acid and endless solos, Jerry Garcia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WroEPQCFOeo
Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There is a superb lyrical masterpiece in which Kula Shaker dip their fingers into the lively colors of psychogenic substances and rub them into the brains, thoughts and vivid dreams of the audience. The brush of words is beautifully complemented by gorgeous fat guitars, organ, and a light-footed combo of compact bass and solid drums. The brilliant playing tips over into trippy haze of total stonedness, where the wandering minimalism of words and sounds pays homage to all the giants of felt-hat-wearing absence, and in the central part of this musical temple of sonic offerings stands Jerry Garcia himself, the immortal pillar of Grateful Dead. The continuation is a bit more cliché, though far from boring, in the style of The Black Crowes. After the song 303, the story turns more serious and punchy again with Start All Over, on which the whole band shows a bluesy feel for songwriting and performance, with Kula Shaker sounding like a more polished and less raspy version of the Rolling Stones. Then comes the finale of their first majestic excursion into the unknown, Hollow Man, which is calm and piano-driven, long, and then pompously punchy at the end, like the last blow of flames of total creativity, after which the young band would have precious little left to add or improve. The road to the center of the heart is finished, the first story told.
When a person is aware of their roots, of their spiritual and bodily passions, and is honest and passionately set on articulating their self through music, the first act is usually the most unfinished, but also the most real. K by Kula Shaker is a sincere and sparkling gem, with which the lads set such high standards that over the next 15 years they only roughly grazed them, never surpassing them. With the songs Govinda and Tattva, this neo-psychedelic fairy tale re-conceptualized the love for the Beatles, Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, and for the golden age of the Summer of Love, which the young Londoners never experienced in person, though from the safety of their garage they bow to a time of great shifts and a mental as well as musical revolution. They dreamed their musical illusion into being, wrapped it in the mystical mists of the East, in the incense of the Orient, and repackaged the legacy of the sixties into a form that even a younger generation of impatient listeners can easily swallow. If the age of instant spirituality and simplified shamanism really is so in need of criticism, you still can’t fault the young enthusiasts who dared to realize their dreams and carve out their own musical monolith, and the record K is among the more aesthetic specimens, with strong messages of thundering music and deep words spurting from the pores of what’s on offer. Definitely worth frequent practice and sampling!
Lineup
Crispian Mills – vocals, electric and acoustic guitar, tambura
Alonza Bevan – bass, piano, tabla, backing vocals
Jay Darlington – organ, mellotron, piano
Paul Winterheart – drums
Guest musicians:
– Wajahat Kahn – sarod on Sleeping Jiva
– Himangsu Goswami – tabla on Govinda and Jerry Was There
– Gauri – backing vocals on Govinda
– The Kick Horns – horn section on Start All Over
Production
John Leckie, Shep & Dodge, Crispian Mills
Track list
1. Hey Dude
2. Knight on the Town
3. Temple of Everlasting Light
4. Govinda
5. Smart Dogs
6. Magic Theatre
7. Into the Deep
8. Sleeping Jiva
9. Tattva
10. Grateful When You’re Dead/Jerry Was There
11. 303
12. Start All Over
13. Hollow Man (Parts 1&2)
